The leaders, who so far have done all but build the 10,000-seat minor league hockey arena that’s being counted on to revitalize Pennsylvania’s third largest city, dug into two troughs of dirt.

Following years of political, financial and administrative work in Allentown and Harrisburg, this afternoon was the ceremonial start of physically building the arena.

“It’s fitting that hockey is a team sport,” Pawlowski said moments before he, the Phantoms’ owners, sponsors, state officials and others plunged the shovel ends of their double-headed hockey sticks into the dirt at Seventh and Linden streets. “Because bringing this arena to Allentown was a real team effort.”

The Phantoms, the Philadelphia Flyers' top minor league team, are to move into the arena for the start of the 2014-15 season. Phantom's co-owner Robert Brooks told a crowd of more than 100 supporters at the ceremony today that 1,700 season tickets have already been sold.

But hockey’s arrival in the Queen City means more than slap shots and hip checks. Allentown is counting on the arena — and the visitors and construction that come with it — to rejuvenate the city as it pushes beyond 250 years old.

State Sen. Pat Browne remembered touring the wreckage of a building on the same block in 1990 early in his career as a state legislator. He recounted the ground there being broken hundreds of years ago for farming and through the years for businesses big and small.

“Each time ground has been broken here, it has led to progress,” Browne said, calling the block “a place that will be center ice, a place that will always be center square.”

Among arena-related construction planned or started is an 11-story office building, hundreds of new apartments and parking spaces, and restaurant and retail space. The arena itself is to include 180 hotel rooms and a seven-story office complex.

“We know that our city is going to be a very different place,” state Rep. Jennifer Mann said. “A place we’re all going to cherish, we’re all going to be proud of and where we’re going to thrive.”

Phantom’s co-owner Jim Brooks said elected leaders helped continue a project that started almost a decade ago. Among other incentives, the city and state created a special zone that funnels earned income tax from a 137-acre area into funding to help build the $220 million arena.

“Together is how we got here today,” Jim Brooks said before Phantom’s mascot Dax, a sort-of orange version of the Phillies Phanatic, handed out the hockey-stick shovels. “The excitement is building.”